Tag Archives: upgrade

I just upgraded to WordPress version 2.3. It was daunting for me because I customized so much code, and installed so many plug-ins. To be on the safe side, I upgraded a copy of WordPress on my laptop last night to see if there were any issues. I had to edit the theme I’m using, Ocadia, to handle new features, such as tags. I went through my plug-ins list and looked for the latest versions. Once all was set, I prepared to upgrade my public blog.

Despite all my preparations, I still hit a couple of snags. I had set up Dreamweaver to upload a list of uploaded files. Once I was setting up the list, I went to my blog to disable all plugins. I then hit OK to upload the files. For some reason, DW didn’t upload all files so my blog was showing a fatal error. I had to go through the list of updated files again and then tried the upload again. It worked.

I was able to rely on two fewer plug-ins thanks to the new features that were built into version 2.3. I no longer need Jerome’s Keywords plugin which enabled me to tag my posts, though I am grateful that it served me well until now. WordPress comes with importers for tagging plugins that people used prior to 2.3. I had trouble finding the importer. I looked all over until I found it under Manage / Import. I am no longer using the Permalink Redirect plugin since this latest version of WP has the functionality built into the core.

Here’s a list of things–though probably not complete–to do that I learned in order to survive this upgrade. Please review documentation for details: backup all files and database. test first on local server if possible. disable all plugins. upload new files. test. activate plugins one-by-one and check that the blog hadn’t imploded. use a diff viewer to put back custom code, if any, as long as they don’t conflict with new version.

I’ve figured all the issues I had with upgrading to Firefox 2 and now all three of my computers are running the latest version with no problems.

The previous issues that made me revert to Firefox 1.5 after attempting the upgrade:

Lost bookmarks

It turned out what made the bookmarks disappear upon upgrade was that the Firefox process was still running. When doing the upgrade, make sure that Firefox is completely shut down, even if you don’t see it in the taskbar. Open up Task Manager and confirm.

Incompatible Extensions

Some of my beloved extensions did not have versions that were upgraded for 2.0, or I didn’t like the version written for 2.0. I found the trick to trick Firefox into running those extensions. There’s no guarantee that it will work with all extensions, though. Certain extensions showed error messages saying they were incompatible with FF 2 even though they technically could run under it. What was “breaking” them was their info file that stated the version number compatibility didn’t include version numbers greater than 1. We’re going to change that.

Extensions are basically archive files. Find a copy of your extension, which would end in .xpi. Rename it so it ends in .zip so that your computer can recognize it, given that you have software that can unzip zip files. Depending on your software, you’ll want to choose the function to Expand or Uncompress it.

In the resulting folder, you should find a file called install.rdf. Open it in a simple text editor like notepad or wordpad. Look for and edit the number to 2 or greater. Save the file. Compress the folder back into a zip file. Rename the extension from zip to xpi. Install the extension with that file.

Again, it may or may not work depending on the functionality of the extension.

I tried for the second time to upgrade to Firefox 2.0. After reading about the lost bookmarks issue, I checked Windows Task Manager to see that Firefox was really no longer running. This time, I didn’t lose my bookmarks. Yipee! Alas, several extensions could not run in v. 2.0:

BBCode

QuickNote

DictionarySearch*

There were some other extensions but I don’t use them much anymore. However, I really have to have BBCode.

*I use the Dictionary extension to Go To urls that aren’t hyperlinked. It also helps me search words by highlighting and selecting from the right-click menu. Unfortunately, v.2 of the Dictionary extension encodes html characters so that the slashes in urls become html entities, which gives 404 errors. I reverted to 1.5 which didn’t have the “feature.” However, v 1.5 doesn’t work in FF v. 2.0